June 10, 2013

“The danger posed by courts and prosecutors who abdicate their responsibilities to uphold the Constitution in favor of overwhelming community sentiment was recently illustrated in State v. Robert Fulton Kelly Jr.

“The trial prosecutor and the Superior Court judge were so overwhelmed by community sentiment that the trial was converted from a proceeding to adjudicate Mr. Kelly’s guilt or innocence into a forum to assist the families of the scores of alleged child victims recover from the gut-wrenching allegations of the 100-count indictment. The result: Justice was poorly served.

“The individuals thought to be victims and their many family members, loved ones and neighbors were frustrated, angered and in the end felt cheated. The individuals accused of heinous abuse of scores of children were deprived of a fair trial and deprived of liberty for more than three years.”

– From a talk by Henderson Hill, director of the N.C. Resource Center, Office of the Appellate Defender, at the Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr. Constitutional Issues Program, (May 18, 1995)

Oct. 19, 2017

“Though ‘Mindhunter’ at times seems like a fictitious nightmare, the new Netflix series is very much rooted in reality. Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) is based on real-life FBI agent John E. Douglas, and Dr. Wendy Carr (played by Anna Torv) is based on Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess, a pioneer in the treatment of trauma and abuse victims….

“The character molded after Burgess helps Ford and his partner legitimize their research with her sociological and science-backed knowledge….”

– From “The Influential Trailblazer Who Inspired Mindhunter’s Dr. Wendy Carr” by Kelsey Garcia at Popsugar (Oct. 16) 

Yes, it’s just a TV character. But the depiction of Ann Wolbert Burgess as a trustworthy source of “science-based knowledge” should appall anyone who recalls her national prominence in igniting the “satanic ritual abuse” day care panic.

Most grievous for the Little Rascals defendants, it was Burgess who led a three-day conference in Kill Devil Hills just months before Bob Kelly’s arrest. The agenda: learning how to spot child molesters operating day-care facilities.

She has never apologized.

May 1, 2013

“For several years… during which innocent people, many of whom were themselves the parents of young children, were sent to prison, the press by and large went along. ‘The horrors may only have started with sodomy, rape, oral copulation, and fondling,’ Newsweek confidently reported of the McMartin allegations in April 1984….

“Time’s account noted that a horse was slaughtered in front of the toddlers to intimidate them into silence, but the magazine neglected to ask how this messy procedure was accomplished without detection in a busy preschool in the middle of town, where parents and teachers came and went throughout the day. ‘Parents,’ Time chided, ‘were too trusting, assuming that separation anxiety was the reason their children cried when dropped off at school.”

“By the late ’80s, then, the notion that many, many day care workers went into the field only to sate their Sadean lusts for small children, and that schools were places fraught with sexual ‘stranger danger,’ and that childish innocence was under unprecedented assault from the forces of evil, had sufficient credibility to darken the nightmares of mothers and fathers across the country.”

– From “Against Innocence: The truth about child abuse and the truth about children” by Margaret Talbot in The New Republic (March 15, 1999)

“By the late ’80s…” indeed – exactly when the initial allegations were made in the Little Rascals case.

Sept. 18, 2017

Allen Frances, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University, has been generating lots of attention with his provocative and important new book, “Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump.”

What better time to look back at Dr. Frances’s 2014 call to correct the “egregious injustice” committed by the State of North Carolina against Junior Chandler.